Not so Luxor-ious

Luxor is great, don't get me wrong, but (as mentioned in the previous post), it is just too hot (and sandy, and dirty). Reid actually prefers the heat here to SE Asia, where he was constantly drenched in sweat. But I just feel like it's really hot (thank goodness for A/C and showering 3x a day). Anyways, we've taken it a little slow here, between the heat and jet-lag it's been hard to keep hydrated and keep up our energy. Here's what we've done here in the Nile Valley:

DAY 1:

Our train scheduled to arrive in Luxor at 7:10, got in at 9:00. We easily found our hotel and settled in. After lunch, we tried to head to a museum to avoid the heat of the afternoon, but it was closing in an hour. So, we headed back to the hotel and took a nap to rest up for our sunset horseback ride through the desert (pictured). It was very beautiful and we both enjoyed traversing through some Egyptian villages and seeing the sun set in the desert.

P.S. The first photo is of our guide's donkey, he might look cute but boy is he loud! I think I've figured out why they call them asses :)

DAY 2:

We signed up for a "mini-tour" of the West Bank sights that started at 8 am. After collecting all the other participants, we finally arrived at the Valley of the Kings at 9 am--when the sun had just about reached overhead. Luckily, the tombs (being underground/in the mountain) were pretty cool--temperature and otherwise. We then visited Queen Hatepshut's Temple, Habu Temple, and the Collosi of Memnon before getting back at around 3:15. Whew was it hot! Sightseeing basically consisted of looking at stuff for a few seconds before making a bee-line to some shade to cool down before heading off again.

After a shower and a little rest we grabbed some food before heading off to the small Luxor Museum. It was pretty expensive, but well laid-out and had some neat artifacts and we even got to see a couple mummies (which we skipped in Cairo because it was $20 usd each). We then took a walk around Luxor Temple, had a quick beer, and returned to the hotel for an early bedtime.

DAY 3:

We woke up at 7:00 and headed directly to Karnak Temple (we did not stop at GO! and collect $200, oh wait! We did stop at an ATM to re-up on cash. Oh well!) in an effort to avoid the blistering heat of the day. We paid a guide $8 to show us around for about an hour and a half and then we spent another hour taking photos in the Hypostyle Hall. It was one of the coolest things we've seen so far. We returned to the hotel at 11:00 for a late breakfast.

We're scheduled to take a sunset cruise on a Feluca on the Nile at 4:30 and after than we're headed to the airport for our 10:15 flight to Sharm el-Shiek. From there we'll get a car to drive us to Mt. Sinai and clamber up the hill at around 2 am to watch the sunrise before heading down, taking a peak in St. Katherine's monastery, and then heading on to our hotel in Nuweiba (on the Red Sea) and getting some sleep.

More photos soon after we download them. And there are many more photos in our albums, if you want to see more of our adventures.